


and the moon, it wants to give me away

by royalwisteria



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, IT JUST HAPPENED THAT WAY I DON'T KNOW OKAY, M/M, Unhappy Ending, Unhappy Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalwisteria/pseuds/royalwisteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His heart beats, on average, 62 beats a minute and Stiles knows this from repeatedly taking his heart rate, index and third finger digging deep into his wrist, eyes on his watch. He doesn't know when the habit started, but he remembers asking a nurse what she was doing to his mom years and years (just yesterday) ago and it became a habit, something to control. He wonders what his heart beat is now, Derek in front of him, eyes the blue slate his mom chose for the backporch, but checking would mean taking his eyes away from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the moon, it wants to give me away

**Author's Note:**

> title from moonshine by the low life

“Stop.”  
  
Words are just words and nothing more, he always knows this, in an analytical way his mom would have been proud of— words are just words, they only hold the meaning you lend them, and so Stiles would question his dad about swearing at the dinner table using his mother’s words. It was sort of ironic, actually, because his dad is clever, but he’s clever in a down-to-earth way that Stiles is not and his mom was not. Stiles gets it from his mom, the crafty clever, sneaking through cracks in logic until he gets what he wants and it wears his dad down until he gets what he wants.  
  
This, however, is different. Stop. It’s a word that Stiles is fairly used to hearing from Derek, but at the same time it always hurts his heart somewhere. No one ever said stop in a way that indicated that they wanted him to stop everything he was doing with every molecule in their being, as though they would even want him to stop breathing. And that’s Derek’s tone: stop breathing, stop thinking, stop existing on the same plane as me, _I will rip your throat out with my teeth._ Maybe he should be used to death threats from Derek, but it doesn’t help the sting that requires the age-old ointment of a late night with his PS3 and a rotation of favorite games as one can never hold his attention for long.  
  
“Just stop it.”  
  
These are words that his dad has used in the past. ‘Stop it, Stiles, just _stop it_.’ ‘Please, no more of this.’ From his dad, they hurt too, because his dad is irreplaceable, but the intent was different. Underneath his words there was love, the sense that even if Stiles didn’t stop, his dad would still love him, care for him, even though Stiles fights dirty. Derek, though— there’s nothing underneath his words but desperation and Stiles knows there are few things scarier than desperation.  
  
He wants to fight back, use his crafty clever in ways that undermine and poison, but it’s more difficult to do so to Derek than even his dad— which is many levels of unfair, the sort of unfair that calls Stiles back to sterile hospital beds, sitting lonesome by his dying, soon to be dead, mom’s bed, knowing that his dad was busy being the Sheriff because he has two identities and it’s impossible for him to choose one above the other. That sort of unfair, but the blame falls softly on Stiles’ shoulders, to become heavy with time.  
  
Stiles takes an approximate three steps back; the first one is instinct, the second because they’re still too close, and the third is vain because no matter how many steps he takes, he will still feel the heat of Derek’s over-warm body no matter what.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
He hopes for a flicker of surprise in Derek’s face, for what he’s not really sure. For Stiles giving up so easily, for him to actually give up, for the word okay to sincerely exist in his dictionary? But there’s nothing. His overactive imagination won’t give him even that, the smallest seed of something that’s not quite hope, but something that would help him grow. Nothing.  
  
Derek nods shortly and turns away; Stiles watches him because he’s never been able to not watch him. He used to rationalize it as being aware of the potential murderer, then being aware of general surroundings, but he later gave up and just observed Derek. He knows the knuckles of his thumbs, the line of hair at the nape of his neck, the weight of his stride, all sorts of things that have come from years of observation and he learned how to do so from his mom. He’s used those skills when she probably wanted him to use them the least: on her, growing more and more translucent by the day, on his dad the first few weeks, months, years after she died, and now on Derek, the one who easily voices Stiles’ destruction.  
  
When he was in middle school, he used to think it’d be teachers asking why his lunch looked so haphazardly done and he’d lie and say it’s because his dad’s the Sheriff and he’s a very busy, very important man when it was because he still hadn’t learned how to make a sandwich, though there are various reasons besides that. He refused to learn how to make them right for a while, because he wanted his dad to step in and make them, but whiskey bottles filled the recycle bin every collection week and neither of them slept well. In high school, he thought it’d be Lydia: because in love, everything is both the end and the beginning. Stiles never thought it through, because nothing ever came close to teachers leaning concerned over his shoulder and asking the words _is everything okay at home_ but Derek is a different level, more than tones of voices and Lydia combined.  
  
The attachment started without knowing and Stiles denied it just like the observing, telling himself that it was basic human decency to save Derek at the pool rather than call Scott even though he has trouble convincing (read: cannot convince) himself he’d dive in to save Greenberg. When the Alpha pack was around, it was because he needed a cohesive group, but like always, the lies he needs the most unravel the quickest. This time the collateral damage was his heart, which he knows is a better bargain than his mother’s death.  
  
But still. It aches, sharp, blooming deep within him and when he closes his eyes because he can’t watch Derek drive away, he sees it slowly creep across the back of his eyes. It’s the deep you see when you sit for a long time with your eyes closed in a dark room without thinking and slowly colors are visible on the back of your eyes, but no colors appear. Only the ache and this ache is as permanent as the gaping hole that death so kindly provides with each cross of the threshold.  
  
So, he ponders, this is melancholy, a melancholy of broken love, a shattered heart that mirrored an unrealistic dream. He should have known better, really, than to put faith in a reflection rather than reality. It’s leading to more cracks in his mind and Stiles knew that he shouldn’t have fallen in love with a man more damaged than himself.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> to be honest I actually have such a hard on for writing character studies so I'll probably write more, lengthier one(s) at a later date!!


End file.
